October 29, 2013 AT 4:00 am

Object Narratives: The Poetic Potential of Connected Things

Over the past couple of months, I’ve been exploring a set of ideas around the narrative possibilities embedded in the Internet of Things. The public discourse about connected objects has been highly utilitarian, yet there is a whole world of narrative and poetic potential embodied by the Internet of things that has yet to be fully explored. As more of our objects and environments become actuated, connected, and data-enabled, these enchanted objects are developing the capacity to contain their own stories. An object can remember its history, can understand how it is used, can talk to other objects around it to understand its environment. As these capabilities evolve, objects no longer become inert backdrops to our experiences, but active participants in our world that can share stories about themselves and us.

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